Sword of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  That feeling was confirmed as the two men set off in the direction of the Vicus Longus. When they’d walked a hundred paces over the baking cobbles Serpentius hissed a warning. Valerius glanced back to see four of the sailors following in their wake. It seemed Juva regretted his impulse in letting them go so easily.

  The men were still with them when they reached the Vicus. Valerius’s first instinct had been to lose them, but Serpentius purposely held back and he waited to see what the Spaniard had in mind. By the time they reached the narrow streets of the Subura, the sailors were only a dozen paces behind. This was Rome’s poorest district, a tight-packed haven for gangsters, thieves and pimps where a life wasn’t worth a shaved sestertius and no sensible man would come to another’s aid.

  ‘Is this wise?’ Valerius muttered.

  ‘If we lose them, they’ll just keep looking. We need to convince them we’re not worth the pain. Where better than this?’ He lifted his sleeve to reveal a gnarled wooden cudgel he’d picked up from a pile of weapons at the door of the tavern.

  Valerius grinned. ‘I think I know just the place.’ He stepped up his pace, increasing the distance between the two men and their tail. When they had gone another fifty paces he turned to his left on to the Via Subura, a road that would eventually take them out towards the Esquiline Gate. As they walked, he explained his plan to Serpentius and the Spaniard nodded agreement. They took another turn, into a warren of alleyways hemmed in by apartment blocks, which eventually brought them to a crowded square with a fountain in the shape of a fish at its centre. Serpentius darted to the left and lost himself in a crowd in front of a tavern called the Silver Mullet, before disappearing up a street which ran parallel to the alley they had just left. Valerius continued onwards. He knew the sailors would be suspicious that they’d lost Serpentius, but that couldn’t be helped. He kept his pace steady; there was no hurry now. Eventually he saw the dark shadow of a narrow passage that cut off at right angles ahead and to his right. Now he slowed, allowing his pursuers to catch up. The locals here had an unerring sense for impending trouble and he felt them drifting away like smoke until he was alone in the narrow street with the four sailors. He passed the darkened entrance to the smaller alley without a glance and carried on a few steps before swinging round to face the enemy, a short sword miraculously appearing in his left hand. The first two exchanged glances at the sight of the bright iron, but they didn’t break stride. The one to the left was armed with a sword and the other hefted a nailed club. They knew they were facing a fighter, but with odds of four to one in their favour they were confident their opponent was already a dead man.

  The second pair of sailors were big and tough and alert, but they had never faced someone with Serpentius’s speed and skill. The Spaniard darted from the Alley of the Poxed Tart already swinging the stolen club to take the nearest man on the bridge of the nose, smashing bone and cartilage and leaving him momentarily paralysed. As the sailor’s companion turned to face the threat, Serpentius rammed the head of the club into the V formed by his ribs below the breastbone, driving every ounce of air from his lungs. If he wished, either could have been a killer blow, but Serpentius had weighted them to disable. For good measure he swung the club right and left, rattling each of the sailors on the skull just above the ear, buckling their knees and dropping them heavily to the festering rubbish that littered the cobbles.

  The two men facing Valerius’s sword heard the cries of their oarmates and froze, not even daring to turn and check the new threat.

  ‘We have no quarrel with you,’ Valerius said carefully, ‘and we mean you no harm.’ Given the circumstances it seemed an unlikely claim and he saw suspicion and fear harden their faces. ‘You’re not dead, are you? And neither are your shipmates. All you have to do is pick them up and take them back the way you came. You first.’ He gestured to the man on the left, the big Danuvian from the tavern. The sailor hesitated, but Valerius nodded encouragingly. ‘Believe me, this is not worth dying for.’ The man exchanged a whispered word with his friend. His eyes never left Valerius’s blade, but he nodded agreement and went back to help the two men who lay groaning under Serpentius’s watchful eye.

  ‘Tell Juva I wish him well and that he doesn’t have to concern himself with us,’ Valerius said.

  The last man nodded slowly before turning to help his shipmate. They took a man each and shouldered them down the street, edging their way past the Spaniard as he whirled the cudgel like a child’s toy.

  They watched the sailors go. ‘Will they fight, do you think?’ Serpentius asked.

  ‘They don’t lack courage,’ Valerius said. ‘And Nero has been clever enough to offer them something to fight for. But they won’t stop Galba.’

  The Spaniard snorted derisively. ‘Maybe they won’t have to. We’ll all have died of old age before Old Slowcoach gets here.’

  VI

  9 June

  By early summer Rome was a whirling sea of rumour and gossip, each tale twisted and chewed over as a dog gnaws an old bone, and less likely than the one that preceded it. Nero had called on his old friend King Tiridates of Artaxata and an army of Armenians and Parthians was already marching to his aid. He had filled a ship with the contents of Queen Dido’s treasury and set off to found a new Empire in Africa. He had laid down the reins of power and pledged to make his career on the stage. He was already dead. Other stories were closer to the truth. Two more legions in Moesia had deserted his cause. Vespasian, who had yet to openly declare for Galba, had guaranteed Nero’s safety and offered a place of exile in Alexandria. This last scenario, Valerius knew, the Emperor’s opponents wanted to be true, and his new friend Nymphidius Sabinus, joint prefect of the Praetorian Guard, did what he could to make it seem so, sending loyalist elements among his cohorts to Ostia to await Nero’s coming. Within hours of their departure their more avaricious comrades accepted an offer from Nymphidius on behalf of the Lieutenant to the Senate and People of Rome of thirty thousand sesterces a man, ten years’ pay by Valerius’s calculation. Where Galba would find the money was another matter. The old man might be rich as Croesus, but Valerius doubted that Rome’s most notorious skinflint would be pleased to hear he had paid twice as much for his Empire as Claudius two and a half decades earlier.

  Still the Senate wavered. Galba had not moved from his base in Hispania and the legions of Verginius Rufus, battle-hardened and angry, lurked around the headwaters of the Rhodanus in Gaul. Galba had the authority, but Rufus had the power. If ever Rufus wanted to be Emperor, now was his chance. But, through fear, or loyalty, he did not take it.

  It needed one more push, and only one man could provide it. Valerius packed a thousand aurei of Otho’s Emperor’s bounty in the builder’s sack and went to visit Offonius Tigellinus. By late afternoon the deed was done and the Senate declared Emperor Nero Claudius Germanicus Caesar an enemy of the people.

  The house Valerius sought lay close to the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. Substantial and well built, it might have been the home of a prosperous merchant. He doubted it would have been the first choice of the woman who now occupied it, but perhaps she had good reason for selecting a modest residence. This visit was a distraction from his mission, and a potentially dangerous one, but Valerius was bound by the vow he had made to her father, and even if it had not been so, his heart would have drawn him here.

  The thought of seeing her again turned his legs weak and he fidgeted at the entrance like a nervous schoolboy until a doorman answered his knock and showed him inside. Domitia Longina Corbulo’s face showed surprise when she recognized him, followed by a frown of suspicion as the doorman announced him by the assumed name he had given. But she would not have been her father’s daughter if she hadn’t instantly recovered her poise. She ushered him through to a light-filled room with an open roof and a small pool at its centre. On a bench in one corner an elderly woman looked up from her sewing and frowned. Domitia took a seat on a second bench and waved Valerius
to a cushioned marble ledge a few decorous feet away.

  ‘You should not have come here, Valerius.’ She smiled. ‘I am a respectable married woman, you know.’

  He shot her a warning look at the use of his true name, but Domitia only laughed in that unaffected way he remembered. If anything, she had grown more lovely in the two years since they had parted, the lithe figure fuller than he remembered, but the deep brown eyes still with their mocking glint. Not a girl any longer, but a true Roman lady. A respectable married woman. She would be nineteen.

  ‘Do not concern yourself. Cassia is deaf.’ She exchanged smiles with the old woman. ‘She sees no evil, because I ensure there is none to see, and she hears nothing at all, which I find useful. When he went to take up his praetorship in Sicilia, my husband left me with a hag whose tongue was as sharp as her ears, but I rid myself of her before she could do any damage.’

  Valerius allowed himself a smile. ‘Still as formidable as ever.’

  ‘I may be married, Valerius.’ Her words were accompanied by a smile, but they held an iron core. ‘Some day I may even be owned, but I will never be ruled.’ She held his gaze for what seemed an age. At the very heart of her was the same resolve that had made her father who he was: Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, general of the armies of the East. ‘I thought you must be dead.’

  The change of direction caught him off balance. He remembered the desperate escape from Antioch as the Emperor’s agents closed in after Corbulo’s death. The resolve she’d shown even as her world was being torn apart. ‘I should have been. In Alexandria, Vespasian kept Nero’s assassins at bay, but when we left for Hispania they followed us through Africa and Mauretania. They came close in Leptis, but Serpentius saved both our lives.’

  ‘He is with you?’

  ‘He has business in the city.’

  She nodded, slightly distracted. ‘And you have been with Governor Galba?’ He could hear the doubt in her voice.

  ‘You disapprove of what he is doing? I would have thought—’

  ‘No.’ Domitia shook her head. ‘It is just that he seems so …’ She searched for a word he knew was ‘feeble’, but came up with ‘old’. The next words came in a rush. ‘A true soldier would already have been at the gates of Rome. A true soldier would not have waited. You would not have waited, Valerius. You would have destroyed that man … that monster.’

  He felt the heat of her passion, the same heat that had seared them both on the sun-scorched Egyptian beach where the shattered wreck of the Golden Cygnet had lain rocking in the shallows. He darted a glance at Cassia, but the old woman was concentrating on her needlework. That monster … the man who had ordered her father’s death. Nero. ‘That is why I came. I wanted you to know that he will fall, probably before morning. Who knows what might happen. The city could be dangerous for days, even weeks. Perhaps it would be safer if you left.’

  She shook her head. ‘I will be safe enough. I have a protector who will provide me with guards.’ She saw his look as the alternative meanings of the word ‘protector’ registered and gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, Valerius, he would not dare. He was part of the escort General Vespasian provided from Alexandria. Now he follows me around like a devoted puppy, but sometimes … sometimes I see a look in his eyes that troubles me. When this is over I will send the puppy away with his tail between his legs.’

  ‘And who is this … protector?’

  This time the laugh was genuine. ‘Surely you’re not jealous, Valerius? That was in another lifetime. He is seventeen, just a boy.’ He could have reminded her she was the same age when she had become his lover, but he doubted she would see the irony. They talked for a while longer, tiptoeing around the subject that linked them like one of the shackles binding the prisoners in Nero’s death cells beneath the Palatine. It was not his place to raise it, and when Domitia declined the opportunity he sensed the interview was at an end. They rose together, somehow coming closer than either intended. He could smell the scent of the perfumed oils on her body, and something more subtle below it.

  ‘Was that the only reason you came, Valerius, to warn me?’ She said it lightly enough, but the words made his head spin. When he spoke he seemed to have pebbles in his throat.

  ‘No. I wanted to see you again, for one last time.’

  There was a moment – a long moment – when he wondered if she wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her. He wanted it, and he knew she knew he wanted it. But neither moved. Eventually, her face twisted in a grimace that might have been pain or regret and she reached out her right hand to place something in his left. He looked down at the blue Caesar stone polished by the touch of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo’s fingers.

  The whispered words were so faint that, afterwards, he wondered if he had heard them at all.

  ‘Restore his honour, my Hero of Rome. Finish it.’

  VII

  Later, the only thing Valerius would recall clearly of that night was the walk from the Aventine to the Clivus Palatinus where he found Serpentius waiting. The rest was like being at the centre of someone else’s dream. An impossible drama played out in an alternative world.

  ‘You know what to do?’

  The Spaniard nodded. ‘We have all the exits covered, including one or two only Tigellinus knew about.’

  ‘If he comes out, you follow him and send word to me,’ Valerius warned him. ‘There’s to be no trouble in the city. It’s unlikely the mob will support him, but we can’t afford to take the chance. His marines are still loyal. If they’re drawn into a fight with the Praetorians there will be a massacre.’

  ‘So this is what it’s like to make history?’ Serpentius shivered despite the warmth of the evening. ‘It feels as if the gods are blowing on the hot coals of a dying fire. Will it make a difference?’

  Valerius thought of all the years of opportunity squandered under Nero’s rule. The thousands of dead souls now crying for revenge. Had it been any different under Claudius? Or Caligula? Or Tiberius? ‘I hope so.’

  The Spaniard straightened. ‘Then that has to be enough.’

  Valerius took a deep breath and walked swiftly to the gate, where the palace guards stepped aside without acknowledging his presence.

  ‘Nero has abandoned the Golden House,’ Tigellinus had said at their most recent meeting. ‘He feels safer on the Palatine, surrounded by people he can trust. No one will stand in your way. He has been told an officer will report the latest situation. Phaon, his freedman, and a few of his slaves will not abandon him, but neither will they oppose you.’

  The receiving room was as Valerius remembered it, vast and intimidating, with the great marble statue of Laocoön and his sons being tormented by pythons dominating the left of the chamber and bathed in light as he opened the double doors. Only the right side of the room, around the golden throne set atop a dozen stairs, was properly lit, as if the throne’s owner wished to remain blinded to the reality that lay beyond the reach of the lamps. The throne was empty.

  Valerius stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and stood in the darkness, listening. At first there was nothing apart from the soft swish of a fan attempting to stir life into the thick, heat-heavy air. Then he heard it, a low muttering from the far side of the room, beyond the open windows that led to the balcony. He focused on the sound and walked towards it, placing each step to minimize the noise of his nailed sandals on the marble floor. Gradually the words became clearer.

  ‘I am lonely, Mother.’ The voice of a young man, soft and pleading. ‘Why did you desert me? All I ever wanted was to please you.’

  ‘Please me?’ Another voice, this time high-pitched, a woman’s. ‘Why, you murdered me, ungrateful child, stabbed me on the shore; hard stones in my back and my blood mingling with the salty sea.’

  Valerius shivered as he listened.

  ‘Not me, Mother. Some fool who overstepped his orders. You deserved so much better than that tawdry end.’

  ‘And Seneca, who was your friend, was that also a mistake?’ />
  ‘I miss Seneca.’

  ‘And Britannicus?’

  ‘Did I ever make you proud, Mother?’

  ‘What mother would not have been proud of a son like you? Each time you sang, you sang for me. Every triumph, you dedicated to me.’

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘Yes, Caesar?’

  ‘What must I do?’

  The shrill voice was replaced by an urgent hiss. ‘Run, Lucius. You must run and never stop.’

  ‘There is nowhere to run.’ Valerius’s voice had all the finality of a marble tomb closing. He stepped from the shadows and the stocky figure on the balcony froze, silhouetted against the dying light, his eyes bulging, pale with fright. All the blazing glory and deadly threat that had made him the object of awe and fear was gone now. Where there had been an Emperor, now there was only a man.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, Caesar.’

  ‘You should be dead.’

  ‘I come with a message from Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo.’ Even in the gloom Valerius saw that pallid flesh grow paler. ‘He bears you no ill will, despite the calumnies you heaped upon him. He seeks no revenge, though I, for one, would not hesitate to avenge him. All he asks is that you act with the nobility of your line. It is finished. Today the Senate decreed that you should be scourged to death. You have seen men scourged; backs bared to the bone and flesh in tatters. Could you stand the kiss of leather and iron? And even if you escaped that, what fate awaits a man forsaken by his people? Fight and you will lose. They will tear you apart for the horror you brought upon them. Run, and they will find you, wherever you flee.’